Well, I knew about this news a few months back, but it was still a hush-hush affair in the rather stale Singapore MMO scene. However, as more news gets posted online, I thought I would share an exciting piece of news to all Singapore MMO gamers. Shanda Games, or 盛大游戏, has officially stepped into the Southeast Asia market with the help of Cherry Credits.
The Southeast Asia branch will be called Shanda Games International. If you are familiar with Shanda Games, they are one of the biggest MMO companies in China, publishers of Aion (CN) and the upcoming Final Fantasy XIV (CN).
So yes, we will most probably see Dragon Nest (English) in Singapore sometime in 2011 (hopefully).
The current confirmed lineup for Shanda Games International:
1. Storm Online (official website)
2. Latale Online (teaser website)
3. iL Soulbringer Online (contract signed, no teasers yet, Taiwanese version, Korean version)
You can search for videos of Latale on YouTube since there are already NA and EU servers, while iL Soulbringer currently has no English servers yet.
In brief, iL Soulbringer is a game where players collects pets called Pios (like Pokemon) and tame, feed and breed them with other Pios etc. These Pios can even be used to change jobs after players hit level 15. So yeah, it means players can simply change jobs by equipping the appropriate Pio. Pios can also used to enhance equipments. Oh and yes, there are combat Pios which will fight alongside players too.
Unconfirmed (90% sure it will happen):
1. Dragon Nest Online (English)
If Southeast Asian players are lucky, we might even get Dragon Nest in English first… Hey, just a thought, don’t take it seriously 🙂 Nexon will still be publishing the game in North America (not sure about Europe).
I will like to clarify once again that the North American rights is still under Nexon North America (unless something changed behind the scenes, I am not sure), I am talking mainly about an English Southeast Asia server here.
